A Catapult Story

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Title:     A Catapult Story
Author: Mary Louisa Molesworth [More Titles by Molesworth]

"Oh, well, you can have a catapult if you like," said Hector, with lordly disdain. "It doesn't matter to me, and it certainly won't matter to any one or anything else. You'll never hit anything--girls never do. They can't throw a stone properly."

"You're very unkind, and--and--very horrid," said Dolly, nearly crying. "It's very mean and un--it's not at all like knights long ago, always to be saying mocking things of girls."

"Rubbish," said Hector. "Besides, if you come to that, girls or ladies long ago didn't want to do things like--like men," the last word with a little hesitation, for he knew Dolly was sharp enough to be down on him if he talked big. "They stayed at home and did sensible things, for women; cooking and tapestrying, and nursing wounded soldiers."

"They had to go out to the battle-fields sometimes to get the wounded soldiers--there!" said Dolly triumphantly. "And what's more, some of them did know how to fight, and did fight. Think of Jeanne d'Arc, and--and--somebody, I forget her name, who defended her husband's castle."

"All right," said Hector. "I'm not quarrelling with your having a catapult, and you can defend your husband's castle with it if you like--that's to say if you ever get a husband. I should think a girl who knew how to sew nicely, and to keep her house very neat and comfortable, a much nicer wife than one who went about catapulting and trying to be like a man. And you know you're not really so grand and brave as you try to make out, Dolly. You screamed like anything the other day when I threw a piece of wood that looked like a snake at you."

"It was very mean and cowardly of you to try to frighten me," said Dolly. "And I know somebody that needn't boast either. Who was it that ran away the other day when Farmer Bright's cow got into our field? Somebody thought it was a bull, and was over the hedge in no time, leaving his sister to be gored or tossed by the terrible bull."

Hector grew red. He was not fond of this story, which had a good deal of truth in it. It seemed as if a quarrel was not very far off, but Hector thought better of it.

"I was very sorry afterwards that I ran away," he said. "You know I told you so, Dolly, and I really thought you were close beside me till I heard you call out. I don't think you need cast up about it any more, I really don't."

Dolly felt penitent at once, for she was a kind little girl, and Hector's gentleness touched her.

"Well, I won't, then," she answered, "if you'll teach me how to catapult."

Hector did his best, both that day and several others. But I must say I have my doubts as to whether catapults are meant for little girls. Dolly tried over and over and over again, but she never could manage to hit anything she aimed at. And at last her patience seemed exhausted.

"I'm tired of it," she said. "I'll give it to Bobby. I shan't try to catapult any more."

And it would have been rather a good thing if she had kept to this resolution.

But the next day when she was out in the garden with her brothers, admiring Hector's good aim and the wonderful way in which he hit a little bell which he had hung high up on the branch of a tree as a sort of target, it came over her that she would try once again.

"Look at that bird, up on the top of the kitchen-garden wall," she said. "I'll have a go at it."

Hector laughed.

"I think the bird's quite safe," he said.

Dolly thought so too. She did not want to hurt the bird, she was really speaking in fun. But all the same she aimed at it, and--oh, sad and strange to say--she hit it! a quiver of the little wings, and the tiny head dropped, and then--in a moment it had fallen to the foot of the high wall on which it had perched so happily a moment before!

The children rushed forward breathlessly. Dolly could not believe that she had hurt it, scarcely that she had hit it.

But alas! yes. It was quite dead.

Hector held it in his hand. The bright eyes were already glazed--the feathers limp and dull.

And oh, worse and worse, it was a wren. A little innocent, harmless wren.

Dolly's sobs were bitter.

"I'll never touch a catapult again," she said. "A nasty horrid cruel thing it is. And I didn't really mean to hit the poor wren."

"It was only a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow for the wren, had felt some admiration for his sister's skill.

"N--no, not that," she said. "I did aim, but I never thought I'd hit it. Still, Hector, it shows you I can hit, you see;" and the thought made her leave off crying for a moment or two. But the sight of the poor little wren changed her triumph into sorrow again.

"I've done with shooting," she said, as she threw the unlucky catapult away.

And then she covered up the dead wren in her handkerchief and went in to tell her troubles to "mamma."

Her mother was very sorry too.

"You must think of it as a sort of accident," she said. "But let it be a lesson to you, dear Dolly, never to do anything half in joke, or for fun as it were, which could cause trouble to any one if it turned into earnest."

There was some comfort in the thought that it was late autumn, and not spring-time, so there was no fear of poor little Jenny Wren's death leaving a nestful of tiny orphan fledglings. And Hector helped Dolly to bury the bird in a quiet corner of the garden.

But all the same, Dolly has never liked catapults since that unlucky day!

[The end]
Mary Louisa Molesworth's short story: Catapult Story

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